Business Directories

Dubai favourite to host Expo 2020

Dubai, September 30, 2013

Dubai is seen as the best-positioned candidate city to host the global exposition World Expo 2020, a survey has found.

In the survey of 1,000 executives from the Alliance Business Centers Network (ABCN), 57 per cent (570 executives) voted in favour of Dubai, while 18 percent saw Russia’s Yekaterinburg as the best choice. Brazil’s Sao Paulo scored 14 percent and Turkey’s Izmir lagged behind with 11 percent, said a statement.

The winner of the bid is expected to be announced by the end of November. If successful, Dubai could potentially attract 25 million visitors to the event, which could last up to six months, and would be the first Middle Eastern city to host the exhibition.

A number of factors contributed to Dubai’s popularity as the destination of choice in the survey. Some 35 percent of participants found the city’s openness and cultural diversity as the main reasons. This was followed by the emirate’s strategic location as a central tourism and trade hub, its world class infrastructure as well as its political and social stability, scoring close to 20 percent each.

The survey included 1,000 managers from the ABCN international network spread across 28 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia, including in the three competing nations.

The emirate would benefit economically and socially from hosting the expo with high expectations of multi-billion-dollar project launches. Close to 45 percent of executives surveyed said they anticipated new opportunities for growth and the potential of setting up a business in Dubai if the bid ended in success.

“As Alliance operates 650 business centres with 15,000 companies globally, we decided to gauge our clients’ sentiment around Dubai’s readiness to host the Expo 2020,” said Sherif Kamel, president of Alliance Business Centers Network for the Middle East and North Africa.

Kamel highlighted the success of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, which attracted 73 million visitors and 246 nations that participated with pavilions for six months. The exposition augmented the city’s GDP by five percent that year, and 31 percent of tourists who attended the Expo visited neighboring cities in China.

It is projected the Expo 2020 will bring in Dh139 billion in revenues to the UAE and create 277,000 jobs between 2013 and 2021, according to a recent study by the UK-based consultancy Oxford Economics. –TradeArabia News Service